


we were nothing like the rest

by sleeplessmiles



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 02:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3101342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessmiles/pseuds/sleeplessmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes weeks and weeks of training before Skye finally makes her breakthrough. </p><p>May has her following a very strict, highly specific regime; the two of them continue with Skye’s combat training without the use of her new abilities, keeping them tightly reined in. She tests out the capabilities and limits of her powers in separate sessions, with Jemma and Fitz monitoring her.</p><p>They never mix the two.</p><p>Until they do.</p><p>--</p><p>In which Jemma and Fitz help Skye to start enjoying her new abilities, and May takes care of them all from afar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were nothing like the rest

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt, 'May & Skye + 'Are you challenging me?' on tumblr.

 

It takes weeks and weeks of training before Skye finally makes her breakthrough. 

May has her following a very strict, highly specific regime; the two of them continue with Skye’s combat training without the use of her new abilities, keeping them tightly reined in. She tests out the capabilities and limits of her powers in separate sessions, with Jemma and Fitz monitoring her.

They never mix the two.

Until they do.

 

—

—

 

‘You can have a bit of fun with it, you know,’ Jemma ventures one morning during a session. Skye’s taking a quick water break, leaning against the small bench Jemma and Fitz are perched upon with all their computers and gadgets. Fitz has jumped down and is fiddling with one of the sensors on Skye’s arm, muttering to himself.

Skye just stares up at Jemma.

‘What?’

Jemma winces, clearly unsure of whether or not she should continue – clearly uncomfortable with it – but the determined set of her jaw gives her away. She’s going to forge ahead regardless.

_Shit. Must be important to her._

‘We just think you’re being a little… cautious, I suppose.’

Skye huffs out a bitter laugh. ‘You’d be cautious too if you could level a small city by sneezing.’

Fitz immediately objects, straightening to look her in the eye. ‘Hey, you  _know_ that’s not – ’

Jemma cuts him off by slapping at his arm and frowning pointedly at him. He closes his mouth, but not without a grumpy scowl. Widening her eyes at him once more in warning, Jemma turns to back to Skye.

‘I know you’re terrified you’ll lose control,’ she continues quietly. Skye swallows thickly, forces herself to maintain eye contact. Jemma’s face is sympathetic, as though she knows what Skye’s doing.

She probably does.

‘And that’s perfectly understandable, Skye, it really is. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to enjoy yourself as well.’

‘Yeah, and you don’t have to feel guilty about liking it, either,’ Fitz adds helpfully. When Skye looks across at him quizzically, though, he shyly averts his eyes. ‘We’ve, ah. Seen how much you enjoy it.’

Jemma rolls her eyes. Skye looks between them, not understanding.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

His ears are going a little red now. 

‘When you feel, ah, pleasure…’

‘Yeah?’ Skye asks impatiently.

The girls both watch him for a little while, giving him ample time to dig himself out of this hole, but he seems to have just given up. With a longsuffering sigh (the likes of which Skye hasn’t heard in  _months_ ), Jemma comes to his rescue.

‘What Fitz is  _trying_  to say is that we’ve monitored the levels of various chemicals in your blood and when you… ahh…’ she flounders for a moment, trying to find the right word. ‘Activate? When you activate, there’s a tremendous spike in the level of endorphins in your bloodstream, as well as a plethora of other hormones. These chemicals are usually detected in such high amounts during strenuous exercise.’ 

She looks at Skye pointedly. Skye blinks back at her, uncomprehending.

‘ _Highly_  strenuous exercise.’

It clicks.

Skye turns to Fitz, an exaggeratedly scandalised expression on her face.

‘Wait.  _Enjoying_  enjoying?

Fitz won’t meet her eyes.

‘Are you making this into a weird sex thing, Leopold?’

‘No!’ 

‘Sounds like you are.’

‘I’m  _not_.’

Jemma’s face is too innocent. ‘Well,  _technically_  – ’

‘ _– Jemma!_ ’ Fitz whines.

‘What?’ she asks, voice angelic. He groans in frustration, running his hands over his face. Skye’s just smirking at him now, enjoying his discomfort.

Eventually, Jemma gives him an out, offering up an explanation.

‘The changes to your overall metabolism mean that while these levels would have impacted you in a  _certain way_ ,’ she raises her eyebrows suggestively. _What a dork._  ‘…Before all of this, they’re now at a somewhat more bearable level.’

‘Lucky me,’ she drawls.

‘But Skye,’ Jemma says softly, steering them back on topic. ‘Even if we didn’t have these readings, we’d still know. It’s written all over your face.’

They’re right, of course. She does enjoy it: the way it pulses through her veins, seeming to reach every single cell of her body. It’s like this instinctive awareness of every single molecule that makes up her body. It’s a constant humming, a constant vibration, in the back of her mind. 

It’s  _exhilarating_.

But how can she possibly enjoy it? She doesn’t deserve to take pleasure from the very thing that took him –

That took him away from them.

Both Jemma and Fitz are watching her face carefully, blessedly in tune with where her thoughts have strayed.

‘You don’t have to keep punishing yourself,’ Jemma murmurs.

‘I just can’t let it hurt anyone else. I don’t know…’ she exhales shakily, toeing at a smudge on the ground with one sneaker. ‘I don’t know if I can carry that.’

‘We know,’ Jemma murmurs. And Skye knows they do. She knows that they carry the guilt as much as she does, has felt it pressing down around them when the three of them are alone. She’s heard them whisper their regrets into the stillness of the night.

She knows.

‘But you won’t hurt anyone,’ Fitz says now, voice steady and certain. ‘Not unless you want to.’

Jemma smiles in agreement, looking at Skye earnestly.

‘You know what I was thinking of the other morning?’ he continues suddenly. He’s gazing across the training area, eyes slightly unfocused, but he’s got the smallest of smiles on his face.

(It’s going to be a Trip thing, Skye realises. They’ve been trying so hard to talk about him openly, and it hurts – holy shit, does it  _hurt_  – but it helps a little.) 

‘He’d be getting you to smash the most ridiculous stuff,’ he insists, grin broadening. Jemma lets out a breathy laugh. ‘None of it would have any practical use, of course, but he’d be doing it just for fun.’

They’re all quiet for a moment, drawing comfort from the truth of the statement. Because he would, Skye thinks. He’d be all about her making the most of this, having fun with it.

‘Do you think that’s what we’re missing now?’ Jemma asks quietly, when the silence has stretched on too long, has become too oppressive in its emptiness.

In its lack of Trip.

Fitz and Skye look across at Jemma in question.

‘Our sense of fun, I mean,’ she clarifies.

Skye snorts bitterly. ‘I think that ship sailed a long time ago.’

‘Some things are never quite lost, though, are they,’ Jemma muses, eyes flicking across to Fitz for a moment before she looks back at the training area.

Fitz sighs dramatically, intentionally breaking the moment.

‘Dunno about you, Jem, but I personally have loads of fun watching Skye destroy shit.’

Jemma grins at Skye, conspiratorial. ‘It  _is_  rather thrilling.’

Skye looks across at their goofy smiles, their hopeful faces, and she knows that the enjoyment wouldn’t be just for her sake.

It’d be for all of them.

Breathing in shakily, she places her drink bottle back on the bench.

_Enjoy yourself._

She can do this.

With another deep breath, her mind filled with memories of pearly white smiles and musical laughter, Skye steps back out onto the course.

 

—

—

 

The two weeks that follow are just ridiculous, in every way that matters. Each day around 11, she walks down to her training area to find Fitz and Jemma happily setting up obstacles for her to contend with: new day, new hypothesis, new obstacles. She sits down and stretches, trying to get into the right frame of mind as she watches them argue over the smallest of details. The familiarity of the bickering washes over her, giving her strength.

And then, she goes to town.

It’s impossible to tell who enjoys it the most, really.

Fitz aggressively pumps his fists and cheers, triumphant every time she smashes something – whether that had been her intention or not – and Jemma likes to call out a mixture of instructions and encouragements. They’re just both so generally thrilled by it all, and Skye wants to say it’s because of the rapid progress she’s making, but she thinks it’s probably the destruction she’s wreaking that has them so breathless and giddy. 

The whole thing’s like some stupid episode of  _Mythbusters_ , but Skye finds she can’t stop herself from grinning.

And that’s when she realises.

This was May. May had insisted on this separation. She’d made Skye work with Jemma and Fitz, forcing her to come to terms with her powers and accept them, however begrudgingly, as part of her.

May had orchestrated the entire thing.

 

—

—

 

The next morning, Skye watches May wrap her hands before their sparring session, marvelling at how terribly she’d initially misunderstood the older woman.

How could she have ever mistaken her stoicism for lack of care? It seems impossible, now, that she could have gotten it so wrong.

‘You didn’t separate my training out for any real technical reason, did you?’ Skye finally says in a quiet voice, more statement than question.

May simply blinks back at her, face unreadable, and Skye knows her suspicions are spot on.

‘You just wanted me to be okay with my abilities.’

She stares at Skye a few moments longer, evaluating.

‘Are you?’

‘Okay with them?’ Skye confirms. May nods, just the once.

God. Was she? Will she ever be?

‘I don’t hate them,’ she finally says. It’s really all she can say with certainty at this point, but if the understanding on May’s face is anything to go by, it’s all she really needs.

‘We’ve spoken about harmony of mind and body,’ May explains calmly, surprising Skye with her sudden openness. ‘If we’d sparred when you didn’t even consider them to be a part of you?’

She doesn’t answer her own question. She doesn’t really need to.

‘And Fitz and Simmons were concerned,’ May adds as an afterthought. She says it as though it’s explanation enough, and Skye supposes it kind of is. The whole situation had been assuaging her friends’ worries as much as it had been helping Skye.

Really, May had been looking after them all.

(‘You know what would be  _really_  fun?’ Jemma had asked suddenly at breakfast yesterday morning, eyes bright and tone conspiratorial, before excitedly sharing her suggestion.) 

Skye smiles to herself at the memory. Now seems as good a time as any to give her friend’s idea a trial run.

‘Guess it’s about time to see how harmonious I really am then, huh?’ she proposes slyly. May straightens up fully, regarding Skye with a pleased glint in her eyes.

‘Are you challenging me?’

‘I don’t know, Agent May. That depends.’

May arches a brow in silent question. Skye smirks.

‘Are you ready to rumble?’ 

The expression of disgust and utter disbelief that overtakes May’s face then is truly one for the ages.

‘I would have gone with “ready to shake things up,” myself,’ comes a familiar Scottish voice. Both May and Skye turn to the doorway, only to be greeted by the sight of Fitzsimmons – and it  _is_  Fitzsimmons, Skye realises. She isn’t really sure how it happened, or when it happened, but it’s not Fitz and Jemma.

It’s  _Fitzsimmons._

They’re a united front again.

( _Because of you_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Trip’s insists in her mind.)

Fitz is smiling, one of those close-lipped contented things he’s really only just beginning to rediscover. On his right, Jemma’s beaming, giving one of her overjoyed, innocent little waves that none of them have seen for such a long time. They’re both holding their matching thermoses; the ones that Skye had insisted she get for them after accidentally spilling their tea for the umpteenth time.

(She’d gone straight to May with the request, and May had simply pointed her towards a car, driven her to the nearest shops.

Back then, May hadn’t questioned her at all.

She isn’t questioning her now, either.)

They’re here to watch, Skye realises.

 _They’re here to watch_ me.

Turning back to face May, Skye watches with a grin as the older woman slowly backs onto the sparring mats, assuming a fighting pose. She bounces over to stand opposite her, grin broadening when Jemma and Fitz start to clap and cheer.

‘Don’t go pulling your punches on me,’ Skye jokes quietly.

May’s face is incredulous, but Skye barely has time to register it before her mentor takes a vicious swing at her.

And  _wow_ , this is actually happening.

With an excited thrill, Skye vibrates the ground underneath May, trying to put her off-balance. It quickly becomes apparent that her mentor’s too quick on her feet, so Skye has to try to anticipate where the nimble woman might jump next, pre-empting her next move.

May’s leaping around, pride mixing with the determination on her face.

Jemma’s laughing gleefully from the other side of the room.

Fitz is cheering loudly every time one of them lands a hit.

And Skye feels it bubbling up in her chest.

It feels right. 

It feels  _right._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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